Bug 30675 – PCMCIA dies when switching to battery power

• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Benjamin Schulz 2003-10-08 08:45:51 UTC]

I have a pcmcia wlan card (WG54) in an ACPI notebook. When cutting the
powerline, the screen gets a little bit darker to save energy.

But when I'm having my pcmcia connected and downloading something, the
connection is lost after the cut of the powerline (with full Battery of course).

The card is OK (works under Windows). When ACPI is disabled, there's no more
error. Since PCMICA should be not affected with voltage or other energy changes
of ACPI, this seems to be a Kernel Bug that can maybe damage some PCMCIA hardware.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. install a Wg54 in an acpi notebook
2. fill the battery
3. download something
4. cut the powerline while downloading

Actual Results:  
voltage loss. Card loses internet connection. difficult to wake it up.

Expected Results:  
no voltage loss

do not use pcmcia with acpi. this is the only known workaround

[Comment 1 Brian Jackson (RETIRED) 2003-10-08 09:55:38 UTC]

Need more info. You didn't say anything about what kernels you've tried,
what hardware you have (other than the card), etc.

[Comment 2 Benjamin Schulz 2003-10-08 10:53:47 UTC]

the Kernel is gentoo-sources-r7
(that means the newest recommendet by gentoo.org)
I have an sis645dx chipset, P4 Mobile 2,8Ghz
It has APM 1.2,ACPI1.0 ultra DMA, an AMI PnP Bios
an ATI mobillity Graphics card 
etc...
Since I'm writing here from my desktop computer I can't paste the infos of
dmesg..

[Comment 3 Benjamin Schulz 2003-10-08 10:55:11 UTC]

the supplier is of course, a low cost one: it's a Gericom modell,
blockbuster 2440XL not an expensive item..

[Comment 4 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) 2003-10-31 14:42:19 UTC]

Does this occur with other kernels? What about if you use APM and not ACPI?

[Comment 5 Benjamin Schulz 2003-11-01 03:15:12 UTC]

with apm it works

[Comment 6 Benjamin Schulz 2003-11-01 03:15:43 UTC]

but it may also be, that this is a driver related problem!

[Comment 7 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) 2003-11-01 04:05:23 UTC]

Okay. Can you disable APM, stick in ACPI, and make sure ACPI debugging support
is on, so you'll get anything interesting in your dmesg. Also merge 'acpid',
and run 'acpid -d' so it'll output events to the console. Take out the power
once it's running, and see if anything horrible happens. Paste as much useful
info as you can.

[Comment 8 Benjamin Schulz 2003-11-01 04:20:48 UTC]

sorry. but I'm selling this notebook (because I received a better one) in
ebay tomorrow!

maybe, the folks at http://prism54.org/  in the forum http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/viewforum.php?f=19
it has more persons with the samme problems and gentoo on the machines.

I'm sorry.

[Comment 9 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) 2003-11-01 09:57:24 UTC]

Resolving due to circumstances...